The cofounder of the brewery and pub chain faced online backlash earlier this week for saying employees do not need a ‘work-life balance’.
Brewdog founder James Watt has spoken out in defence of his controversial ‘work-life balance’ comments, claiming that Britain is among the world’s most work-shy nations.
The entrepreneur has suffered a wave of abuse since he shared a video on Instagram alongside his fiancee Georgia Toffolo, in which the pair described the idea of work-life balance as an invention by “job haters”.
They suggested that balancing your career with a healthy personal life is problematic and is for people who dislike their job.
“I think the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the job they do, so if you love what you do, you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration,” said Watt.
His fiancée Toffolo continued: “It’s so true, when I met James I was quite taken aback at how aligned we are in the important stuff and one of those things was a lack of work-life balance in a really beautiful way.
“Work knows no bounds,” she continued. “Constantly in our home, we are working but we do things we find incredibly fulfilling and we also have a supportive other half that loves that high-octane obsession with what we do.
“I’ve always known I would end up with someone like James because it would not work otherwise. If someone was saying ‘you need to knock off now’ I would be thinking ‘what, do you not like my business? Do you not believe in me? Are we not striving towards the same thing?’”
It wasn’t long before the clip started doing the rounds on social media, with many mocking the multi-millionaire couple for their ‘work-life integration’ suggestion.
Watt had initially uploaded the clip to Instagram. However, he ended up deleting the video, explaining in a follow-up post that the comments have “crossed the line from debate to personal abuse.”
In a blog posted to LinkedIn about what he called a “bizarre controversy”, he asked what it said about British society that “a post extolling the virtues of hard work gets met with this kind of furious backlash?”
As per The Telegraph, Watt wrote: “As a nation, we love to joke about the French being lazy, but the reality is that our output per hour is 13 per cent lower than theirs.
“And I’ve heard countless international leaders say that the UK’s work ethic just doesn’t stack up against other nations, especially the US.”
Mr Watt cited a King’s College London study that he said found the UK to be by far the least work-orientated nation of the 24 countries studied.
He also raised research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that put the UK’s lack of growth over the past 15 years down to a decline in productivity.
Mr Watt added: “This isn’t to say nobody in the UK works hard – I know that millions of you do and are relentlessly grafting every day.
“And it’s also not to say that people have to adopt my personal philosophy on work-life integration. But since when did it become mainstream to hurl vile abuse at somebody sharing their approach to hard work?
“And if we can’t have a civil conversation about work ethic without descending into personal attacks, how can we expect to compete on the global stage?”
